while I agree with almost everything you say, almost all the time, I'm wary of creating blanket statements...
Unfortunately how the top witnesses behave is not inline with a long term sustainable steemit. It is antisocial & centralized and narrow focused.
As one of the top witnesses who knows fully we aren't covered by this particular brush stroke, I find myself doing more DMing back and forth these days with voters who say, "well, but I was told the top twenty are bad and they don't need my vote but I like you and now I'm confused."
We are a part of the change that many want to see happening who also need votes and who need support like many others, and we balance community with dev work with service and with charitable action and with any number of facets here. I suppose an addendum to your on-point statement is that the tools and the community work should also strive to teach critical thinking and communication so that we don't have a school suddenly flashing in a new direction without actually understanding why.